Amazon’s hidden secret: fake reviews
On many massive retailer sites today, there persists a hidden but large problem: Fake reviews. In this blog post, we will observe the effect and extent of those reviews on Amazon – the largest online retailer of goods. While fake reviews are a two way street, with people blatantly and outright criticizing a good or piece of work (books, magazine, etc), there are more people working to create artificial “5 star” positive reviews based on little to no experience or interaction with the good. To break it down, we have to observe the morale of people behind writing these reviews.
Truthfully, for the average citizen and online shopper, we rarely write reviews (at least for me). And when we do, it is either for an extremely durable and well crafted good / work of art, or an incompetent and falsely marketed item (and unfortunately, it’s for the latter most of the time). Now, for many items such as computers, electronics, there is a little subjectivity of the reviews, as there are entire websites and blogs dedicated to the review and update of electronics and their specs. It is, hard to argue with the numbers staring you in the face. However, with a matter such as books, the line is blurred. Everyone reads and interprets differently, and that’s not even accounting for preferred writing styles, education level, familiarity with the author, and other other bias the read might have. As a result, some authors on Amazon have began to doctor artificial reviews. Some, even paying companies and individuals to create these artificial reviews if they are not so skilled at creating 5-10 different accounts and trying to write not-so-suspiciously-alike-reviews. This has raised a red flag on both Amazon and the community’s part, with many reviews being deleted and accounts suspended. But, there is still a large amount of artificial reviews that have done undetected and authors that will continue down this path to better their works.
So, the question is, why spend all this time doctoring reviews? It’s not going to put you on the National book award list, or anything like that. The true reason is, the authors hope to cause an information cascade based on their doctored reviews. Let’s face it, when we buy things on amazon or elsewhere, unless it is a large investment (electronic appliance, house, car), we’re not going to bother to google and find another credible source of reviews. Chances are, we’ll quickly glimpse at the reviews on Amazon, and if it’s something to our liking (4-5 stars, let’s say), then we side with the majority consensus and hope we made the right purchase. Even if the book didn’t live up to our standards, chances are, we’re not going to bother to write a lengthy review of it, and more probable, just shrug it off and move on. This is where the authors and publishers are hoping to exploit. They hope to create enough fake and doctored “high star” reviews, so the majority consensus is to their liking. This way, people just browsing or “on the fence” about the work will more likely buy the book and generate revenue for the authors and publishers. While this is unethical and wrong, there is an easy answer to this. On sites like Amazon, there exists people that really go out of their way to provide honest reviews about products and other books, goods, and so on. They give lengthy and honest feedback, and often, their review is voted up and becomes the first review you read. As a result, their words often resonate with the buyer more powerful than the amount of stars that the good has. And these people, are our true heroes in this uphill plight.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2012/08/28/fake-reviews-amazons-rotten-core/
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-Icecream